Don't bother with Fire Emblem Engage 6/10
2023 is the year of mini-reviews. This is the first entry and it’s a bit of a doozy.
So - Fire Emblem. Turned-based strategy RPGs have been a main stay of mine and Fire Emblem has certainly been a deep well to quench my thirst over the years. I spent many days in 2019 playing through all the houses in Three Houses. It probably would have been my number one game if RE:Make 2 didn’t come out that year. Any way - safe to say that I like me some Fire Emblem.
Unfortunately Fire Emblem Engage is not a good game. That fact that it was priced £10 cheaper than Three Houses should be a clue right off the bat. It feels like Intelligent Systems wanted to try and push the engine from Three Houses and create a tech demo for all the different things it could do and then wrapped it in a completely forgettable narrative with dull characters and called it a day.
For those unfamiliar with Fire Emblem in general. They are broadly linear games which flip between visual novels and the skirmishes which result. In the skirmishes you use your various characters who are typically different classes of unit and engage enemies using a rock paper scissors style of combat e.g. sword beats axe, axe beats sword, etc. New to Engage are Emblem rings which all characters to take on the characteristics of units from other games - there is a no sufficient story reason for this but just go with it. Engage also adds a raft of customisation options for characters which are equal parts good and bad.
That’s it in a nutshell. If that sounds interesting to you and you haven’t played Fire Emblem Three Houses then don’t waste anymore time here and go do that. Hell, if you have played Three Houses your time is probably better spent there anyway…
There’s a lot bad with this game and I could write paragraphs about the nonsense within but unlike Fire Emblem Engage I will stop short of dragging you through and excruciatingly dull and redundant process. Instead here is my top 5 list of dumb decisions in this game.
Narrative is generic trash with zero redeeming moments, twists or decisions.
Every single new character is a generic trope. Customisation lets you make them even more generic and quickly allows everyone to become a killing machine with no weaknesses.
Most will spend a lot of time in the hub world which is chock full of busy work that respawns every time you have an encounter. It is filled to the brim with dumb tasks like a bad scrolling 3D shooter or a under baked fishing minigame, or my favourite, sit-ups where you have to mash a button to fill up a gauge.
There are optional encounters to allow for opportunities to gain additional levels between missions. However, they seem to scale based on the average level of all your characters so you will find many characters get left behind on the level curve despite your best intentions to use them.
Multiplayer is in the game - a common request from other titles. Unfortunately the implementation is an optional tacked on mode which has next to no difficulty scaling and is almost completely pointless other than earning (one of many) unique currency which can be exclusively used to power up your Emblem rings.
I could continue, like the weird gacha game to make rings which have no purpose because they share the same slot as Emblem rings which are significantly better… but I will have the strength to leave it there.
So, in summary. This game seems to be the intersection of a many ideas and very little thought or polish. The game’s merit is that the combat in the game can be fun, challenging and rewarding. However, it can very quickly become unbalanced due to bad scaling.
Deep down there is definitely something there - I certainly had more fun with the first 10-20 hours of combat than I did with the majority of combat in Three Houses, but make no mistake this is not a good game. There is very little redeeming other than the combat which still ultimately gets stale. After 40 hours I am done with this game. No I did not finish, nor do I have plans to. It was not worth my time. I will wait for the next one where I hope they do carry some of the combat DNA sans all the other nonsense and weave it into a story and wider gameplay loop that is actually interesting.
A big swing and a miss for RPGs in 2023. Please let Octopath Traveler 2 be good.